The grilling of food is a popular method of food preparation, particularly in a recreational setting. Outdoor grilling is particularly popular in the summer time as a way to avoid introducing additional heat into an interior of a living environment as well as itself being a recreational activity. Further, outdoor grilling is often done at parks and campgrounds, as it is a convenient means of food preparation at locations that are away from normal residential areas. Portable grills are often used in such remote locations, as they are readily transportable as opposed to large, residential outdoor style grills. The demand for portable grilling methods is evidenced by the great many portable grills that exist in the marketplace. Examples of portable grills can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,753,431 issued to Koziol, U.S. Design Pat. No. D282,619 issued to Fitzgerald, U.S. Design Pat. No. D461,360 issued to Bossler and in the Webber® GO-Anywhere® line of grills.
While portable grills are popular and convenient, they have some significant limitations in terms of their usefulness. Portable grills often include only low profile stands, and are used on the ground or on an elevated surface such as a picnic table. Grilling on the ground is inconvenient for the grill operator, as the operator must continually bend over in order to prepare the food. Likewise, elevated surfaces may not always be available in some locations where portable grills are used, thus making any pre-grilling food preparation, such as filleting fish or cutting vegetables, difficult to perform. Further, if a picnic table is used to elevate the portable grill, some of the limited seating capacity or food preparation area is then consumed by the presence of the grill. Nonetheless, the usefulness of having the grill located at the remote cooking site represents a significant benefit.
Another popular category of grills are those mounted on a vehicle. In this style of grill, the grill is mounted on a car, van, boat, trailer, or other recreational vehicle. These vehicle mounted grills are variously mounted on trailer hitches, railings, ladders, walls, shelves, and racks on the vehicles. Although vehicle mounted grills provide significant benefits in that they are transportable to a vehicle-accessible location, these grills are not readily used in a grilling mode at a remote location away from the vehicle since the vehicle operates as a stand for the cooking body. Such a configuration can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,426. However, in grills such as these, the grill is not actually a portable grill since the rack only supports the grill in an elevated position and is not able to independently support the grill on a horizontal surface detached from a vertical structure. As such, it is not possible to sue the grill associated with the U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,426 away from a vehicle, which severely limits rang of the usefulness of the grill.
Another type of grill that has been proposed are grills that may be mounted on a vehicle and also may be mounted on an independent stand. Examples of this type of grill are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,626,126 issued to McNulty; 6,640,949 issued to Smith; and Patent Application Publication 2001/0042545 A1 published to Robin. These types of grill may be used both with a vehicle and remote from a vehicle, but in these types of grills separate stand and mounting elements are required to be removed from or attached to the grill. In these types of grills one set of support members are connected to the grill in order to mount the grill on a vehicle and another set of support members are used to create an independent stand for the grill. Thus the complexity and number of parts are thus multiplied and require greater space for storage and transport.